take a look inside

Sunday morning stream

The corner table in Starbucks had uneven legs and wobbled unpredictably. It made writing a challenge. My eyesight had become so poor I could barely make out the words as they escaped my pen and fled across the page.

Where were they going? Did they have any clue? Or was freedom not an idea to them, but a reality only experienced in that moment, as everything must be. None of them made it beyond the page’s edge. If they did, I had no idea what they were and where they ended up.

Perhaps they had found their way onto other pages and assimilated themselves there as part of a broader narrative. With stoicism – and some concealed longing and regret – they had accepted their positions within new and unfamiliar sentences, trying their best to fit in, regardless of the inexplicable discomfort they caused the other words.

Other may not have been so lucky. They could never adapt, never find any peace. They would be condemned to standing out, their difference being the only defining character the other words could discern in them.

Or else they loitered on the edge of a page, lost but conspicuous in the margins, hoping to avoid being crossed out…

Footnote: I’m what I would label a “tight” writer. Too careful. I rarely allow myself the opportunity to simply go with the flow, scribble down the first thing that comes into my head and see where it takes me. This was an exception. I just had a spare twenty minutes and a notebook, and managed to switch the thinking part of my brain off for once. It may be nonsense, but it was fun!